Thursday, January 13, 2011

I'm pretty sure I heard the girls all singing the Hallelujah Chorus as we pulled out of our somewhat icy driveway on Thursday afternoon for our first trip out of the house in over 5 days! Just to get out and play in the fluffy turned icy white stuff required 30 minutes of dressing, after which the girls happily played for 10 minutes max. So with no school, no play dates, and weather so cold that it was not fun to stay out for more than a few minutes at a time, we had to get creative to entertain ourselves indoors.

We watched several good movies. Despicable Me, Toy Story 3 (my favorite), Eloise at the Plaza on DVR, and Ramona and Beezus (the girls' favorite as evidenced by the 100 times they asked to watch it within a 3 day period) all made the cut. Incredibly, the girls didn't ask to watch the television unless it was to see one of the above movies, and we only watched Ramona and Beezus 5 times and the others once each.

The girls "helped" me in the kitchen where we made homemade pizzas, fresh french bread, banana muffins, homemade pancake syrup, and massive amounts of waffles which are now filling our freezer.

They painted, spent hours and hours playing with their homemade play dough, colored, made princess bead jewelry, and drew life sized creations on very large pieces of cardboard.

All of the above were important in keeping us sane while stuck at home, but the most important thing that kept the girls going strong this week was their wonderful imaginations. I am so grateful that they all seem to be blessed with fantastic, creative little minds!

One night 3 of the girls were in the bathtub and one was resisting. There really isn't room for all of them to bathe at the same time anymore, so I didn't mind. I went to straighten up the kitchen while the water was running. When I came back a minute or so later, I overheard the fact that the tub crew was performing a c-section on a poor, unsuspecting mermaid bath toy. My non-bather was "assisting tub side" on the delivery. There was more giggling and laughter than I'm sure is allowed in a surgery suite, but otherwise they cracked me up with their "doctor" language.

Another favorite imagination game they love is to pretend to be mamas. They like to take turns being Aunt Kari and several of her friends who have young babies. They nuwrsetheir babies, change diapers, play with them, and babysit for each other while they take turns making trips to the grocery store and many other more outlandish places.

When the snowy weather arrived, I was so grateful that I hadn't put away the Christmas cards we got this year just yet. At least once a day the girls dug through the stack of photo cards and drew out a family... usually one with babies or small children, and then they pretend to be that family. Many a day was spent telling and re-telling them our friends' names, their children's names, their pets names, if included in the card. Because we still keep in touch with friends from the other places we've lived, there were quite a few cards with families that the girls just don't remember so those were always favorite picks during the "Chwristmas Card Game", as they called it. I loved it because the game often entertained them for hours, and it also gave me a chance to introduce them to people they don't know or were too young to remember.

When I finished cleaning up from lunch one day I walked into the living room to find Kate in the recliner with Ella standing over her, wearing latex gloves, and poking around in her mouth. As I entered Ella was saying, "Hummmm... it looks like you need to do a better job with your flossing young lady!" Playing right along Maggie looked up from behind her little make shift desk and asked if I was there for my appointment with Dr. Barrett.

Early in our snow captivity their creative little minds decided that we should attempt to "super glue Daddy to the wall so he won't have to leave for Afghanistand". That didn't work out for us, but I can say that we've more than survived this past week. I am super duper ready to get back into a daily routine... particularly one that involves not being in the house 24/7, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the time the five of us girls have had to spend together this week.

***This post would undoubtedly be better with photos, but getting out of my blogging groove also means that I now find myself with a new computer and trouble inserting my SD card. From half way around the world Scott can't help me. I'll try to add some pictures tomorrow from my laptop and erase all this nonsense about no pictures.***

"Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind, don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there aren't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection."

-Mark Twain

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